Re: [PLUG] Re: Need to reinstall grub

[Jeff Kaufman <cbr@sccs.swarthmore.edu>]

Art Alexion wrote:
> Jeff Kaufman wrote:
> 
>> You can set a drive to be bootable in cfdisk, and your linux drive will
>> need to be bootable.  In some BIOSs you can set the boot order for the
>> hard drives, but in others you can't.
>  
> I think I can (haven't checked lately, but I think I can set the boot
> order in BIOS)
> 
> Do I need to do both?

You would.  But I think it is unlikely that your BIOS will let you boot
to the primary slave.

> 
>> Is your dead hard drive still inside and connected?
>>  
> 
> Yes.
> 
> I intend to install another hard drive that I have laying around.  I
> don't want to make this more complicated than it has to be.  That is, I
> don't want to mess up anything that points to hdb (slave on primary IDE)
> by removing the shot drive and making hdb, hda.  I guess, I'll make the
> new drive the master (the way it was before).
> Then again, my linux system (the only one I really use on this machine)
> is on hdb2 because it evolved that way.  That is, originally installed
> Red Hat as a dual boot on hda2.  Got hdb installed and made hdb1 the
> /home partition for Red Hat.  Installed Ubuntu on hdb2 and after
> insuring that I liked and could get work done on it, zapped Red Hat from
> hda2 and used the partition to store ogg files.  Kept windows on hda1 in
> case I needed to use it to maintain this non-standard-seeming Compaq
> hardware.  Never have.
> 
> So, if it isn't hard, in terms of messing up the installed distro to
> make the remaining drive the primary (hda), maybe I should do that and
> keep the new drive for the ogg files as hdb.  suggestions?

If you can't set your BIOS to boot your primary slave first, you are
going to need something in there that the BIOS can boot to.  And that is
 what needs grub on the mbr.  So you could either:

1) Install your music drive now as the primary master and put grub in
its hda.  This would not require changing BIOS settings, but would
require formatting it from knoppix, setting it to be bootable with
cfdisk, and setting up grub in its mbr.

2) Switch your linux drive to be the primary master.  You would not have
to change BIOS settings but you would have to set it bootable.  You
would probably have to fix /etc/fstab to switch hdb for hda, but
probably nothing else.


Jeff



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